A little old lady in a blue sweater and a gray beret just walked into the coffee shop and stared at me. "Dawn?" she said.

"No," I said, smiling.

"Oh! You look just like someone I know."

I smiled, she shrugged, and went to get a cup of coffee. When I looked up, she was staring at me again.

"Are you the lady from American Street?" she demanded.

"No."

"Huh!" More staring. "You look like two different people I know!"

"And I'm just me!" I said.

Anyhow, it's cold in the coffee shop, and the floor's all wet and slippery from melted snow, and my fingers are stiff and my brain feels half-frozen. We got about a foot of snow on Saturday, and yesterday it was too cold and windy to go out for long. Want to know how Lu and I have been whiling away our indoor hours?

Forty-five minutes of the foot on the Magnadoodle, accompanied by the sounds of "Mahna Mahna" on repeat.

I hope this is our only blizzard this winter.

In other news, I sent a query to The New Yorker, proposing a short, funny piece I'd like to do for them, and haven't heard so much as a "thanks but no thanks" email in response.

So now, of course, I'm convinced that every editor in the place is sitting around wiping tears of hysterical laughter off of their cheeks at the thought of the author of GOOD IN BED writing for them. That they've posted my query on some communal bulletin board so everyone can stand around and making pithy, epigrammatic bon mots about the absolute hilarity of a chick lit author sullying their pages. That John Updike's made a special trip to Manhattan just to mock me.